From the
Wall Street Journal. Pictured is Itzhak Perlman in his motorized scooter.
At a New York Festival of Song concert in November, the organization’s artistic director and co-founder, pianist
Steven Blier,
zoomed onto the stage in his battery-operated wheelchair.
“This
takes a minute, so study your program notes,” Mr. Blier said to the
audience as co-founder Michael Barrett held a piano chair for him to
slide into, and then tucked the wheelchair away.
Mr. Blier
launched into a program he dubbed “Art Song on the Couch,” connecting
late 19th- and early 20th-century German songs with the ideas of
Sigmund Freud.
Mr. Blier, who has a degenerative muscular disease called
facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, is one of three New York-based
classical musicians with coming concerts who have navigated substantial
careers despite significant health challenges. The careers of these
musicians illustrate the difficulties, decisions, discrimination and
even advantages that occur when health intersects with the physical
demands of being on stage.
“A performing musician has to deal
with these issues in a public forum, in a way the average person
doesn’t,” said
Joseph Straus,
a music-theory professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and author
of the book “Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music.”
“It’s
a distillation and heightening of what any person with a visible
disability does every time they step out their front door,” he said.
Renowned violinist
Itzhak Perlman
,
who on Wednesday will give his first solo recital in New York in
seven years, has dealt with these issues for most of his life. He
contracted polio at age 4, and at least early in his career people
focused more on what they saw—a child with crutches—than heard, he said.
“I
had to actually prove more, with greater intensity, that I was a
genuine article as far as my music was concerned,” said Mr. Perlman, 69
years old.
As the violinist’s career skyrocketed, his perspective on
disability changed. Mr. Perlman shifted from despising what he refers to
as the “Crippled Violinist Plays Concerto” headlines to advocating for
people with disabilities of all kinds, especially with regard to
accessibility.
But it isn’t always easy, even for a well-known
violinist who zips around on an electric scooter faster than his two
leg-bound companions can walk. “Just recently, I was sitting on a plane,
and the flight attendant asked my wife if I had a chair,” Mr. Perlman
said. “This person did not talk to me because I was the problem. People
think if you’re in a chair, you have a problem digesting information.”
The cellist
Alisa Weilerstein,
32, who solos with the New York Philharmonic
this week, was diagnosed with Type I diabetes at age 9. She began
playing professionally at 14 but made a conscious decision not to tell
her manager about her condition.
“I didn’t want them to think there was anything I couldn’t do,” she said.
These
days, Ms. Weilerstein’s diabetes is under control because she
assiduously manages it, testing her sugar about eight times a day and
wearing an insulin pump, which is inserted into her abdomen with a
catheter.
When performing, she wears the pump in what she calls her
“Bond Girl pouch,” hidden under her dress.
Mr. Blier, 63, hasn’t always used a wheelchair. His muscular
dystrophy is progressive, so he has, until several years ago, used a
cane. And while it has made some things hard, there have been silver
linings, he said, like the way that being forced to relearn elements of
piano technique has made him a better teacher.
While he has
accompanied well-known singers such as
Renée Fleming
and
Susan Graham,
he counts his muscular dystrophy as partially responsible for
focusing his career toward New York Festival of Song, which presents
thematic recitals and is, he said, his personal passion.
“I had
set out to play for the big names of the day, and I did,” Mr. Blier
said, “but I honestly find what I’m doing now much more fascinating.”
Certain
common threads connect the musicians. Most were frustrated with media
coverage early in their careers, which focused on health or disability.
“I was simply a musician, and I wanted the articles to be about music,” said the percussionist
Evelyn Glennie,
49, who is profoundly, or nearly entirely, deaf.
Yet
the musicians interviewed, by a certain point in their career, became
not only comfortable talking publicly about health, but now use their
status as an advocacy tool.
This ranges from Mr. Perlman’s high-profile speeches at polio
fundraisers to Ms. Weilerstein’s conversations with families whose
children have recently been diagnosed with diabetes. The saxophonist and
Prism Quartet
executive director
Matthew Levy,
50, who has tinnitus, which causes phantom sounds, including
ringing, in the ears, gives presentations about tinnitus and other
playing-related injuries to high-school students.
Many musicians
spoke of the need to be overprepared. “It’s what black people say, it’s
what Asian people say,” said the mezzo-soprano
Laurie Rubin,
36, who is blind. “You have to be better than the average white
person, because people are going to put you in that sort of box.”
Those
with physical disabilities are bound to meticulous logistical planners
of everything from accessible concert halls to transportation to
bathrooms.
And then there is discrimination, which shows up in subtle, and less than subtle, ways.
“My
manager says, ‘There are so many conductors who won’t even hear you
because they know you’re blind,’” said Ms. Rubin, who is also co-founder
of Ohana Arts, a performing-arts festival in Hawaii.
Added
Mr. Blier, “I’m quite sure there are a lot of gigs I just don’t get
asked to do, because everything has to be arranged very carefully.”
Musicians spoke of strong support networks, from spouses to, in Mr. Perlman’s case, his parents, to artistic collaborators.
At
the conclusion of that New York Festival of Song concert, for example,
Mr. Blier’s fellow pianist, Mr. Barrett, didn’t stand up to bow in the
usual fashion. Instead, the two singers and Mr. Barrett gathered around
the seated Mr. Blier in a kind of a group hug.
Mr. Blier grinned from ear to ear.
